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Dante and Democracy

It’s all Dante’s fault.

Were it not for his son, Bill de Blasio would probably not have won New York City’s Democratic primary, let alone the mayoralty. And the mess that boiled over last week between the mayor and the NYPD would’ve never happened.

Dante —or rather, the political ad featuring him— was a hit with New Yorkers because of his massive afro, his likeability and his message on a controversial police tactic.

“He’s the only one who will end the stop-and-frisk era that unfairly targets people of color,” he said in the ad, echoing his father’s unflinching stance on discriminatory policing.

The ad was a smash because it not only captured de Blasio’s policies within the context of family life, but also because Dante looked like many of the thousands of minority youths who were subject to suspicionless stop-and-frisk tactics during the Michael Bloomberg years. When New Yorkers saw Dante, they saw themselves.

Today, police unions and a subset of the NYPD have gone to war with Bill de Blasio over Dante. They have other grievances, too, but they specifically felt the mayor threw them under the bus when he decided to bring up “the talk”—that uncomfortable but necessary conversation nearly every parent or father figure to a young man of color has had over potential dealings with police.

Dante is “a good young man, a law-abiding young man, who would never think to do anything wrong,” said de Blasio at a news conference following the non-indictment in the case of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who died in a chokehold banned by NYPD policy.

“And yet,” the mayor said, “because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face—we’ve had to literally train him, as families have all over this city for decades, in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.”

These were not fighting words; they were never meant to be. They were simply a candid acknowledgment of a painful reality for many New Yorkers of color, at a moment they needed to hear their lives mattered—and that leaders, institutions and the rule of law were not out of touch with their suffering.

The speech was a mere repeat of Dante’s ad message: how to roll in a city where it seems the law somehow treats minorities unfairly. De Blasio merely repackaged it live, raw and uncut. It was the message that won him a majority of the votes and the mayoralty.

But it hit a raw nerve with the police union. It took de Blasio’s personal narrative and distorted it as an attack on police—a “broad brush” that, in the words of Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch, “laid on the shoulders” of the NYPD the weight of a history of racism.

Of course, de Blasio’s remarks did none of that. He was speaking to his constituents—the same New Yorkers who identified with Dante and are still grappling with the legacy of stop-and-frisk, “broken windows” policing and a non-indictment that, even to police supporters, seemed unwarranted. That’s what political actors do in times of crisis.

Lynch missed out on all of this, or at least pretended to miss out on it; he’s also a political actor. The big difference is that he’s not beholden to the Constitution or the interests of the public, but to his own and those of the officers he represents. To Lynch, any crisis is an opportunity—to score points, to secure a contract, to win reelection. He’s as much a politician and a public relations expert as anything else.

And because he’s those two things, Lynch won’t say if he was the one behind a group of rank-and-file officers who turned their backs on de Blasio at officer Rafael Ramos’ funeral. But his specter remains. And it seems his campaign is working: the NYPD appears to have staged a quasi-walkout, refusing to keep law and order “unless absolutely necessary,” whatever that means.

At this juncture, the only question left for New York City as it heads into 2015 —and by extension, America— is whether this is the caliber of men and women it wants enforcing its laws. Because police took an oath to defend the Constitution and to serve and protect people like Dante. And voters gave Bill de Blasio a clear mandate to do just that.

If police find democracy so inconvenient that it’s worth turning their backs on it, they’ve renounced their oath. They have no business bearing an arm and a shield given to them by the people.